John Bell Hood

John Bell Hood (29 June 1831-30 August 1879) was a Lieutenant General of the Confederate States Army. Hood lost his left arm and right leg in the American Civil War, fighting in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Georgia.

Biography
Hood was born in Owingsville, Kentucky, and graduated from West Point 44th of a class of 52 in 1853. He was nearly expelled after getting 196 points out of a permissable 200 demerits. He graduated with James B. McPherson (whom he would later kill), John M. Schofield, and George H. Thomas, who would teach him artillery, and all of these three men would become Union generals and his opponents soon after. In 1857 he transferred to the southwest with Albert Sidney Johnston and Robert E. Lee and was wounded in the Battle of Devil River with the Comanche tribe.

After the Battle of Fort Sumter and the start of the American Civil War in 1861 he joined the Confederate States Army due to his loyalty to his adoptive state of Texas; Kentucky was neutral. On 30 September he was given a brigade of troops, later called Hood's Texas Brigade. Hood fought in the major battles in Virginia such as the Peninsula Campaign, Seven Days Battles, and the Battle of Gettysburg, in which an artillery shell wounded him in Devil's Den, resulting in the amputation of his left arm.

On 18 September 1863 he joined Braxton Bragg in the Western Theater and led the attack on the Union gap in the Battle of Chickamauga, contributing to the victory over William S. Rosecrans' army. He proceeded to fight in the campaign between Bragg and William T. Sherman in the Atlanta Campaign of 1864, and when Johnston was relieved on July 17, Hood took over the Army of Tennessee. Hood attempted many times to break out of Atlanta in the Battle of Peachtree Creek, the Battle of Ezra Church, and the Battle of Atlanta, during which McPherson died, and Hood regretted his death. On 2 September 1864 he destroyed Atlanta and retreated. He tried to coax Sherman into invading Tennessee, but Schofield instead met him and Sherman advanced up to North Carolina by April 1865. Hood's army was defeated first in the Battle of Franklin, and then destroyed at the Battle of Nashville. On 23 January 1865 he was forced to cede command to Richard Taylor and he attempted to join the army in Texas. But Edmund Kirby Smith surrendered, and Hood surrendered at Natchez, Mississippi, on 31 May 1865.

After parole, he was President of the Life Association of America, an insurance business. Over the past 10 years he had 11 children. Dying of yellow fever in New Orleans, his destitute children were adopted by various southern and northern families.